brought to you by COREView metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk

provided by The Australian National University

The Unhomed Iranians in Canberra

Sanam Seghatoleslami

Master of Anthropology Thesis

The Australian National University 2013

2 |

I, Sanam Seghatoleslami, hereby declare that:

to the best of my knowledge this thesis contains no material previously

published or written by any other person, except where due reference is made in the text of this thesis.

On this date February 2013

Signed Sanam Seghatoleslami

3 |

Declaration

This research is solely for anthropological purposes. Although there are

remarks regarding the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the

current regime, this thesis contains no political weight and perspective.

The aim of this research is to anthropologically examine the effects of

change on homemaking and delineate the entailed modifications of the

daily mundane emotional and bodily performances.

4 |

Acknowledgements

Many people assisted in the production of this thesis. I wish to thank

them and to express my deep and sincere gratitude. I have special

appreciation for all the Iranians who participated in this project and

shared their private feelings and perspectives; their life-stories not only

made this project ‗happen‘ but also they deeply touched my heart. I

wish to thank my friends and family who took the time to listen to my

ideas during the past 12 months. I wish to thank Dr Simone Dennis,

my supervisor, who guided me through the project, commented on a

number of drafts and kept me going when I was ready to give up. Ms

Leanne Pattison, my dear friend, took the hard work of copy-editing this

thesis; I will remain in her debt. Special thanks to Ms JJ for reading my

drafts, commenting and providing me with food for thought which

enriched me with a better perspective. I wish to thank the unending

support of my parents from Iran, both spiritually and financially, and

for making academe such a salient part of my life. I salute them for

valuing knowledge over other life achievements. My two dear sisters,

who did not quite know what I was doing but rose and fell with me,

accompanying me in their own unique ways, thank you. Endless thanks

to my childhood friend, Tanaz Assefi, who worked hard in creating a

wonderful illustration, for the cover of this thesis, which matches the

argument of this project; our strong bond enabled her to connect with

my thoughts from London. I acknowledge the care I received from my

dear mother-in-law, in Canberra, who also gave me strength beyond

imagination by setting an example of the power of will and gratitude.

And last, but by no means least, I would like to acknowledge the

unconditional support of my partner in pursuing my academic dream

and thank him for patiently and quietly understanding my mood swings

in my past two and a half years at the ANU.

5 |

Table of Contents

Introduction ……………………………………………………..….…6

Chapter One: Methodology ………………………………………..17

Chapter Two: Home, Homeland, Third Iran…………………….22

Chapter Three: Performing Iranian-ness…………………….….35

Chapter Four: Stagecraft………………………………………..….49

Chapter Five: Conclusion ……………………………………........64

References………………………………………………………….…..69

6 |

The Unhomed Iranians in Canberra

Introduction

The group of Iranian migrants who are the subject of this study left

Iran subsequent to the 1979 Revolution. This migration was in

response to the post-Revolution regime‘s restrictions on societal

participation, and its demands of the population to ‗perform‘ a new

kind of Iranian-ness in their bodily and emotional comportment. The

restrictions on the public performance of emotion, the State‘s

insistence on particular forms of embodiment, and narrowly defined

social participation style, did not allow these Iranians to feel

completely at home in the Iranian State (also see Dennis & Warin

2007; Warin & Dennis 2005). Behaviour and comportment in private

spaces also became subject to the ideological restructuring of the

regime. This included rules about dress codes, mixed gendered

interactions and the consumption of alcohol at private gatherings in

homes and venues where weddings or parties might be held, and

extended to the publishing of certain books and music.

7 |

While Iranians could express themselves in public when participating

in one of the highly regulated celebrations still permitted by the

regime, such as Nowrooz1 and Charshanmehsoori2, and while they

could continue to hold mixed gendered gatherings, such as weddings,

or watch satellite television behind closed doors, as long as they were

not discovered doing so, many felt the kind of unhomeliness that

Veness (1993) described as besetting her own informants, who were

poor, disadvantaged Delawarians living in government shelters.

Veness referred to these informants as the ‗unhomed‘, a term she

used to capture the purgatory of being neither homed nor homeless;

while her informants had a place to stay, they did not have the kind

of ‗home‘, a physical space, a structural ‗house‘ that one either owns

or rents. This thesis also makes use of the notion of ‗unhomed‘.

However, I deployed differently from Veness in that I argue that while

the Iranians I studied lived in their home State of Iran, they

nevertheless felt that they were not at liberty to be ‗themselves’ there,

in public, political or social terms, and could only act, dress and

speak as they wished in private. Even here they ran the risk of being

discovered in breach of the regime‘s strict codes for behaviour. In this

sense, they shared that purgatorial feeling that Veness tries to

capture—they had somewhere to be, but not somewhere to be

themselves and so, for them, it was not home.

1 Nowrooz: Persian NewYear, which is an ancient celebration and occurs on the first day of the Spring

equinox on 20-21 March (see also Koutlaki 2010). 2 Chahrshanbehsoori : literally means Red Wednesday and is an ancient festival dating back 4000 s

from the early Zoroastrian era. It is still celebrated the night before the last Wednesday of the year

(Arab 2007).

8 |

For some Iranians, including those in this study, the disjuncture

between the secretive private life people might lead behind closed

doors and their public life, and the burden of having to perform State-

mandated bodily and emotional conduct, as against the accustomed

and familiar modes of moving, feeling and being they could engage in

prior to 1979, proved problematic. The group of Iranian men and

women I spent time with to produce this thesis felt this burden so

keenly that they resolved to move away from Iran, where they had

been born and raised, in a bid to feel more at home. For the people in

this study, this meant being able to comport themselves, and being

able to express feelings and thoughts beyond those mandated by the

State, without fear of repercussion. That is the freedom to be

themselves, without having to perform to the standards of

comportment and emotional demeanour demanded by the Iranian

regime. The migrants in this study, who now all live in Canberra,

hoped that Australia would present such an opportunity for freedom

of expression, freedom of comportment and freedom to be oneself.

Thus, they, as Hage argues of other migrant communities, engaged in

a kind of physical mobility that defines them as migrants because

they felt that another geographical space would be a better launching

pad for their ‗existential selves‘ (2005: 470).

My study has revealed that Australia indeed affords Iranian migrants

just these sorts of freedoms: women can choose to wear or not wear

head coverings without fear of repercussion from the State; men can

wear ties if they like; men and women can gather together if they so

9 |

choose without fear of being arrested, and they can read whichever

books, or listen to whatever music, takes their fancy—these are all

freedoms that were unavailable to them in post-Revolution Iran,

which kept the people in my study from feeling ‗at home‘ in Iran.

However, while the freedoms Iranians enjoy here in Australia are

those extended to citizens living in the Australian democracy, living in

Australia has not meant that these Iranian migrants are free to

express themselves however they choose. They cannot, in particular,

express what people in my study referred to as their Iranian-ness

however they like. Indeed, many felt that there are expectations of

how Iranian-ness should be performed in Australia. While these

might not manifest as State decrees, and are indeed known to

Iranians as expectations that ‗Australian people‘ have of them, they

are keenly felt, and heeded. Thus, while they may pursue private and

public life as free citizens of a democracy, the migrants in my study

continue, paradoxically, to feel compelled to perform within very

narrowly defined parameters, in emotional and embodied terms, a

modified version of Iranian-ness they perceive as suitable to the State

of Australia, just as they had been required to do in Iran.

Specifically, Iranian people in my study feel it necessary to appear

‗happy and grateful‘ to Australia for providing them the freedom

denied them back in Iran, and to appear ‗civilised‘ and ‗safe‘ to

Australians. This was indicated in their public performances in

Australia, intended to portray the persona of ‗the good Iranian‘ who is

10 |

‗happy‘, not a burden, and is not a threat. Thus, while the migrants

in this study were free from the performance expectations imposed on

them by the regime in Iran to perform a State-mandated version of

Iranian-ness, they still had to perform within narrow expectations in

Australia, albeit in a different register. While they might not be at risk

of arrest for appearing in public in mixed gender company, none felt

they could really be their Iranian selves as they felt they wanted to

be—each had to perform a variety of Iranian-ness acceptable to their

Australian hosts. This led to the feeling, shared by all my informants,

of not being at home, just as they had not felt at home in Iran.

Ethnographically, this thesis examines the emotional and embodied

registers of performances that the migrants felt compelled to give in

Australia, and argues that the movement out of the Iranian borders

has not led, simply, to the freedom that it may seem to have, on the

surface. Analytically, this has implications for what ‗being at home‘

means for Iranian migrants, as it was this feeling they sought in their

existential and physical movement away from the Iranian State. In

this thesis, I conclude that this perceived pressure to perform

Iranian-ness in certain ways is at the very heart of ‗unhomeliness‘, as

it was experienced in the home State, and as it is experienced in the

new place, Australia. While it may appear that performing Iranian-

ness in Australia is very different from performing it in Iran, since the

Iranian State removed the sorts of freedoms that are available to

migrants in Canberra, I argue that both in Iran and Australia

experiences of unhomeliness are rooted not so much in the

11 |

availability of freedoms, as they are in being at home in one’s own

body and feelings, to the point that one does not have to perform the

self, but is simply and unreflexively his or herself. Here I include the

feeling of being at home among a community of ‗like‘ bodies, who act

relationally to one another in unreflected-upon ‗homely‘ ways—if it is

anything at all, perhaps feeling at home persists in not having to

perform a required identity in any highly reflexive manner. This is,

indeed, precisely what was lost in Iran—the old, familiar and

unreflected upon ways of being Iranian, so small they remain

unspoken, but so important that they together constitute what it

means to be at home in one‘s own skin.

It is equally what is lost in Australia; people are acutely aware of the

‗middle eastern-ness‘ of Iran, and how it is perceived in Australia,

especially since the events of 9/11. This thesis concludes that

ironically, despite acquiring the liberties unavailable to them in Iran,

the Iranian migrants I spent time with must yet give narrowly defined

emotional and bodily performances in Australia. Thus, a feeling of

being at home here is not accomplished for them. My thesis shows

that being at home may be fruitfully examined in terms of being free

to unreflexively ‘be’, in this case, Iranian, without having to carefully

construct performances that will meet host (or indeed Iranian regime)

expectations.

Thus, homeliness might not be accomplished by becoming at home in

the story of one‘s own life, as Rapport and Dawson(1998) insist, nor

12 |

might unhomeliness be brought on primarily by the sensory

difference of a new place, as Thomas (1999), and Warin & Dennis

(2005) argue. Indeed, disrupting the story of one‘s own life might be

just what is needed, if that story is one of political repression. Being

involved in a new sensory regime may be just what is required, if it

brings one the freedom to experience new sensory worlds hitherto

closed off. My contribution to this area of anthropological inquiry,

dealing with migration and identity, is that unhomeliness may be

fruitfully examined instead by examining the conditions for being

unreflexively at home. In my argument that Iranians have to perform

a certain kind of Iranian-ness here, just as they do in Iran, lies the

possibility for examining homeliness as the absence of the conscious

performance of self and identity.

Structure

In the first chapter of this thesis I will direct the reader‘s attention to

the methods I used in conducting this research. I particularly

elaborate on my position as a researcher investigating her own

community while herself being an immigrant as well. This unique

positionedness provided an insight into the Iranian conceptualisation

of home that otherwise might have been missed ‗behind the mask of

gratitude‘, as expressions of unhomeliness to a non-Iranian

researcher could have been shadowed by the effort to appear happy

and grateful for living in Canberra. Being an immigrant also situated

me as a ‗like‘ body, as an Iranian self, like my participants. This

13 |

chapter also discusses my data, its collection and the methods I used

to source it, as well as relevant details about the participants.

The second chapter of this thesis is about how home is a manifold

notion for Iranians of this study. In this chapter, I expand on three

facets of home-conceptualisation in an Iranian context and how these

conceptualisations are interwoven to create the sense of

unhomeliness that my informants experienced in Iran and in

Australia. In this chapter, I argue that the unhomeliness they felt has

its genesis in the rupture of social norms in Iran after the event of the

1979 Revolution. It was this rupture that caused Iranians to conceive

of home in three ‗layers‘: first, one‘s domestic home; second, a

nostalgically remembered and longed for Homeland Iran, which

denotes a better time and space than here and now; third, the here

and now of the ‗ Third Iran‘—the theocratic social order developed by

the new regime.

While Iranians regard their domestic home as their private space

where they can be free to express their selves existentially, Homeland

Iran, their vatan, is related to the land, history, and the ancient past

of Iran, a realm that is less ‗real‘, in that it cannot be experienced

now, owing to the political and social conditions ushered in by the

regime, but strongly felt and understood. The Third Iran that was

articulated through this project, was referred to as the Iran which

emerged and came to life after the Revolution and the constitution of

the theocratic regime. This Third Iran imposed new social orders and

14 |

enforced specific ideological standards, in emotional and bodily

terms, which created an alien, unfamiliar Iran in which people were

compelled by the State to give performances of proper, State-

mandated Iranian-ness which led the people in my study to feel very

much not at home in Iran.

The third chapter of the thesis examines the impact this specific and

multilayered conceptualisation of home has on Iranians‘ daily,

mundane performances. This chapter is about expressing Iranian-

ness, emotionally and bodily, in the shadow of the Revolution in Iran,

and in the shadow of perceived Australian expectations of the good

and grateful migrant. As will become clear throughout the thesis, a

sense of being at home is accomplished for my informants when these

shadows disappear, and when one can simply ‗be’ without planning

and adjusting for a watchful audience. The Iranians in this study

were always aware of their performances and took great care to

appear and to express themselves properly, as they thought they

must, in Canberra as they went about the most mundane and

unreflexive actions of social life here.

In Iran, they had to design their performances in accordance with the

regime ideological requirements to be safe. In Australia, they feel

forced to calculate each move to portray the good Iranian, who is

happy and far from the Iranian middle-eastern typified image. This is

also related to feeling safe—to fitting in, to being not cast out, even to

avoid harm that might come from appearing to be a threat, in a post-

15 |

9/11 world. The Iranians of this study performed to impress their

audiences. They modified their Iranian-ness to build a positive ‗self‘

for the perusal of others, to shake off their otherness, carefully

watchful of their speech, appearance and demeanour. This

continuous reflexivity, I argue, is not at all dissimilar to what my

informants had to do in Iran. In Australia, just as in Iran, having to

perform an acceptable version of oneself all the time creates the state

of unhomeliness, a state where one is not home-less, not without

shelter, but yet not at home in one‘s own body, talk, and behaviour.

While we all have to deliver acceptable performances in one way or

another— at work, at a dinner party, in public contexts of all kinds—

it seems that there is a difference between being in public and

performing in public. The first may become unreflexive—you know

how to behave and simply do. Iranians in my study perform. Thus,

they dwell in the purgatorial space between having a place to call

home, but not actually being able to feel at home there.

Clearly this is contra to Rapport and Dawson‘s (1998) claim that one

feels at home when one knows oneself the best. In order to deliver

compelling performances to their ever-watchful audiences, Iranians in

this study had to know themselves very well indeed. This knowledge

was essential for re-designing themselves to appear and to be

recognised in a particular way—that is, to be ‗good‘, happy and

grateful, and so to be accepted by their Australian audiences.

16 |

In the fourth chapter of this thesis, I will discuss how unhomeliness is

embodied. Just as for the theatrical stage, Iranian performances of the

good and grateful migrant came to life on different stages, and in and

through the use of particular sorts of language, as well as in wardrobe

and makeup, and props. Familiarity with these crafts of the stage—

customs, language and communicative skills—was key to delivering the

right performance. My informants thought unfamiliarity with language

and other communication skills caused uncompelling performances

revealing ‗the other‘.

I bring this thesis to a conclusion by suggesting that home is where you

know your lines, but you don‘t know that you know them or that you

are delivering them. The ‘knowing’ happens unreflexively. Being at

home persists when one does not have to perform the self, but can

unreflexively be the self. The thesis concludes that this was not possible

in Iran or in Australia. The Iranians in my study take conscious care to

design, modify and plan their performance as Iranians in both contexts,

to protect themselves in Iran and to ‗be‘ suitable in Australia. The

Iranians of this study are so aware of the fact that they must give good

performances that they relinquish feeling at home.